Unleashing NZ companies at Singapore Fintech Week 2018

07 November 2018

You can expect a strong presence from New Zealand fintech companies at the upcoming Singapore Fintech Week 2018, with 12 confirmed to attend the world’s largest Fintech festival. Providing solutions across the fintech spectrum – everything from analytics to insuretech and regtech – New Zealand companies are looking at the Festival as a unique platform from which they can build customer and partner relationships in Singapore and wider Asia.

A range of both established New Zealand fintech firms and startups are looking north towards Asia to take advantage of the growth in demand for services in developed markets like Singapore, as well as developing markets across Southeast Asia where there are large populations of unbanked consumers in the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam looking for banking and remittance solutions.

Companies such as Xero and Delta Insurance have already established a presence in Singapore and are using it as a base to expand into Asia while others such as Velocity and Eight Wire, finalists at the Global FinTech Hackcelerator, are ready to solve hard problems faced by the Finance sector.

The CEO of New Zealand software and analytics company Eight Wire, Jason Gleason, is looking forward to meeting potential customers and channel partners from across the region at the Festival. Recognising the Future for Eight-Wire is “definitely [as] an APAC and global company”, Finech Week will further enable the company to have conversations with global reinsurers and banks. He says Eight Wire’s value is in being able to help businesses move data effectively across borders, particularly a key focus in Southeast Asia. The company is using APAC as the stepping stone to the rest of the world, with Singapore providing a perfect launchpad, given its relative size similarities with New Zealand, as well as similar language and legal systems.

Meanwhile New Zealand company 9 Spokes has already experienced the Finetch Festival excitement, having participated last year through a collaboration with KPMG’s Digital Village. The experience was so valuable, the company is returning for a second year. Senior Vice President Chris Simmons says the real value of the event lies in the opportunity to build connections and networks, and set up meetings with the right people, describing it as a “key event” for the company.

Look out for the following New Zealand companies attending Singapore Fintech Week in November 2018.

Cove is a New Zealand-based InsurTech company offering innovative consumer insurance products via a chatbot interface. With this, customers can quote, buy, manage & lodge claims on their policies all in one place. Cove’s mission is to enhance the customer experience and make insurance simple.

Based in New Zealand with offices in London, Melbourne and Singapore, Centrality is a decentralised eco-system that connects different applications together using Blockchain powered technology. This technology allows businesses to work together to gain scale through shared acquisition of customers, data, merchants and content.

Databom designs, builds and runs IT systems and process for business.
With 30 offices across New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Vietnam the US and the
UK, they are services customers across IT management, cloud services, data centres and custom software development.

Ilumony’s cryptocurrency investing platform enables customers to easily set up an account and access a range of cryptocurrency portfolios and strategies, including two high-frequency-trading (HFT) algorithm based portfolios.

Simmonds Stewart is a technology law firm that helps companies around the world raise seed and venture capital. The New Zealand based company has offices in Auckland, Wellington and Singapore where it actively helps almost 100 Southeast Asian tech companies raise capital from regional investors.

SingleSource is a decentralised identity and risk scoring platform powered by blockchain. SingleSource gives individuals control over the use of their own personal data and provides organisations with the ability to contribute to, and securely access, this data to make informed business decisions.

The Sylo App is to become the decentralised communication and calling application built on the Sylo Protocol. The Sylo Application will be the first application built on the blockchain-based Sylo Protocol, and will use technology already commercialised in the Sylo Application which is currently available from the App Store and the Google Play Store.

Based in New Zealand with offices in Auckland, Wellington, Sydney and Delhi. Valocity is a platform that streamlines the mortgage and valuation process throughout an ecosystem connecting home buyers, brokers, lenders and valuers. Valocity is a Finalist at the Global FinTech Hackcelerator.

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